Chinese characters, literacy, and the Japanese model

The complexity of Chinese characters is often singled out as the reason for China's low literacy rate. In response, some people point out that Japan uses Chinese characters too, and yet has attained a very high literacy rate; ergo, the Chinese characters themselves can't be the reason. This essay attempts to show why the Japanese writing system can't be used in defense of the Chinese one.

"Japan uses Chinese characters too!"

It should also be noted that although Japanese using a mixed system of
characters and syllabaries (hence even more complicated than the
Chinese writing system), Japan also have a literacy rate of 99%.
Another counter-evidence of "Chinese characters cause illiteracy".

(Please excuse the slightly odd grammar; English is not his native tongue.)

Yes indeed, the Japanese writing system does make heavy use of kanji,
or Chinese characters, in addition to an indigenous syllabary[*] called kana
(actually, two sets of them: hiragana and katakana). It's
probably one of the most horrendously complicated systems in the world,
if not the most complicated. And yet, Japan's literacy rate is reputed
to be one the highest in the world. This surely means that Chinese characters
can't be the reason for China's low literacy rates, doesn't it?

Well, unfortunately, it doesn't. I'm not saying that Chinese characters
(or hanzi, as the Chinese call them) are the reason for illiteracy,
but you can't use the Japanese example to prove that they're not.

[* Syllabary refers to a character set where one letter corresponds to one syllable. An alphabet, by contrast, refers to a system where one letter corresponds to one phoneme (a distinct sound of the language).]

The Japanese writing system

The Japanese writing system regularly uses three different character sets:

Kanji (or "Chinese characters"). These were introduced from China
or invented in Japan following the Chinese model. It isn't clear how many
there are in all, but 1,945 are taught in the nine years of compulsory
education. They're used to write the roots (non-inflecting parts) of words,
and most of them can be read in two or more ways.

Hiragana. These were developed in Japan from a cursive form of kanji.
Each hiragana character represents a syllable, and there are 46 of them.
They're used for writing inflections, particles (something like prepositions
in English), and a few words that aren't (or can't be) written with kanji.

Katakana. Also developed in Japan, these were originally bits and
pieces of kanji. Like hiragana, they represent syllables, and there are
again 46 of them. Today, they're used mainly to transcribe non-Chinese
foreign words and onomatopoeia.

Here's a sample, using all three scripts:

(The characters that aren't underlined are hiragana.) This isn't a
contrived example, by the way, but a typical, everyday sentence; it simply
means "I bought a TV set yesterday".

So, yes, the Japanese writing system is complicated, forcing its users
to know three different sets of characters totaling over 2,000 in number,
and to use them each in their proper roles. And yet 99% of the Japanese
manage to avoid illiteracy. Surely, the mere fact that there are a great
number of kanji (Chinese characters) are no hindrance to literacy. Or are
they?

Where does the "99%" come from, and what does it mean?

Japan's literacy rate is often referred to as "99%", but a browse through
the Ministry of Education's Web site
produced no such number. (Yes, I looked through the White Papers. Tedious
stuff.) Of course, it's possible that I overlooked a relevant document,
but even if the government does indeed claim 99% literacy, there's another
problem: what is the Japanese government's definition of literacy? Does
it mean an ability to handle all 2,000+ characters learned in school? Or
does it mean something else?

Here's a quote from The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy by John
DeFrancis (p.216):

Research by a German scholar into prewar Japanese literacy
noted that the requirements for graduation after six years of schooling,
which was all the education received by most Japanese, included the ability
to read and write 1,360 kanji and to recognize another 1,020, a total of
2,380 in all. Tests on military recruits a few years after graduation disclosed
that youths with public school education remembered how to write an average
of only 500 or 600 characters and still recognized only 1,000 of the 2,380
they had once learned (Scharschmidt 1924:183-187).

And yet those recruits were definitely not illiterate, or they would have
been unusable as soldiers in a modern army. There were reasons why those
recruits could read and write:

In printed texts, obscure kanji were supplied with furigana.
Furigana are hiragana printed in a small size next to kanji in order to
indicate how that character should be read (see image below).

When writing, they could always use the phonetic kana characters as a
substitute for whatever kanji they had forgotten. The hiragana character set
consists of a mere 46 characters, few enough in number for anyone with normal
intelligence to acquire even with minimal schooling.

Another quote from DeFrancis (p.217):

More recently Sato Hideo, head of the Research Section for
Historical Documents, National Institute for Educational Research in the
Japanese Ministry of Education, has estimated that public school graduates,
who now receive nine years of compulsory schooling, retain a recognition
knowledge of the 1,945 kanji but soon forget how to write all but 500 or
so (1980: personal communication).

I recently (1999?) heard from an officer in the military that textbooks for enlisted
men learning how to drive were supplied with furigana on every single kanji
in the text. According to the officer, this was because a number of soldiers
would otherwise be unable to read them.

In summary:

The 99% figure lacks proof (at least, I didn't find any).

Even if it's correct, that "99%" includes a fair number of people who can't
handle kanji adequately.

The Chinese writing system

The Chinese writing system consists of only one set of characters: the
hanzi (so-called "Chinese characters"). Superficially, the system is far
simpler than the Japanese system, which makes use of no less than three
sets. However, this also means that the Chinese system has no method for
writing phonetically.

This does make a difference. A Chinese who forgot the character for
a particular word would have basically no way to write it down. As an example,
suppose someone had to leave a memo asking his or her spouse to buy cucumbers,
but forgot the hanzi. They would have no way to write it down, except perhaps
by explanation ("green, elongated vegetable"). In constrast, a Japanese
who forgot the kanji for "cucumbers" can simply use hiragana or katakana
instead.

There is a possible way out, though; pinyin. Pinyin is an official system of phonetically transcribing the Chinese language using the Latin alphabet, with additional diacritical marks to indicate tones (which play a crucial role in the Chinese language). Pinyin is not widely used today except in study material etc. targeted to foreigners. If the use of pinyin could be expanded to fill the role played by kana in Japanese, it could be a boon for people whose hanzi abilities are lacking.

To sum up, pointing to the Japanese system and saying, "Look! They use the
same characters as we do, and they've got 99% literacy!" is stretching
things a bit too far. Even though the two systems may look similar to the
casual observer, there's a crucial difference. A closer analogy would be
Chinese written with both hanzi and pinyin, with hanzi restricted in number
to 2,000 or so, and with pinyin furigana next to the more obscure hanzi.

Conclusion

It seems safe to say that the "99%" figure so often quoted for Japan's literacy rate includes a fair number of people who have no functional literacy in kanji. The reason they are not considered illiterate is because the Japanese writing system offers a fallback for people who forget their kanji: the phonetic kana characters. If the system consisted solely of kanji, these people would be illiterate.

In contrast, the current Chinese system uses only hanzi and offers
no method of writing phonetically. Therefore, pointing to the Japanese
writing system as a supporting case just doesn't work; the two systems
are simply too different.

As to whether or not the current writing system is the chief cause
of the high rate of illiteracy in mainland China, I can't say. There's
no doubt that the current high rate is partly due to economic factors.
However, the Japanese case seems to suggest that no matter how
affluent China becomes, it will always have a number of people who simply
cannot read or write in hanzi. How to deal with this problem is, of course,
something that the Chinese have to decide for themselves.